


Blue Ribbon

by tanktrilby



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codependency, M/M, Root A feels, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 20:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3622686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanktrilby/pseuds/tanktrilby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In your dreams, you see fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Ribbon

In your dreams, you see fire. You feel the sticky hazy heat of it, hear the snap like bones breaking as the building gives way around you. Kaneki has ashes gathering in his white white hair, five fingerprints of blood on his face. He looks down and he smiles at you. Behind him, the fire blazes like a dying sun.

And there’s you, your hatred and helplessness tossing like a storm in your stomach _failed failed you just had to make him feel safe what are you doing._ It’s frighteningly clear for a dream. It feels like something you’ve thought a million times before, a hatred that has sunk into your bones. _I can’t do anything._

You wake up to the sound of your own ragged breathing. It’s a serious pain; you can’t remember the last time you had a good night’s sleep. Your fingers shoot out and the other side of the bed is OCD-neat, because, of course, no matter how awful your nightmares are they come in at pathetic silver to Kaneki’s in the shitty dream Olympics.

It’s dawn. The sunrise sneaks pale orange and yellow fingers through the blinds, and soon it’ll crash in to fill your cramped little apartment like a flood. In the next room, you hear Kaneki clanking about in the tiny kitchenette, talking to the fish as he makes his coffee. You listen to his voice for a while, and when he hums his fishy friends a little song, you stifle a grin into your pillow.

Before you get out of bed, you say your usual wordless prayer: _please let him be safe. Please let me be safe, because I don’t want him to be alone._ You’re meeting the yakuza today. You can only hope.

In the kitchen, Kaneki has burnt the pancakes. He looks caught between irritation and despair, and when you come in the look he shoots you is one of comical helplessness. Your throat catches with how much you love him, even as you giggle.

*

He’s fretting around with your computer shit, switching back and forth between the camera feeds. Shit. He’s antsier than you’d thought, even on the heels of a big job. The blood hasn’t even fully come out from your clothes yet.

“Like I said,” you tell him as you stuff your gear into your backpack, “it’s just a boring surveillance gig. We can’t risk you getting spotted on something like this, it’d be way uncool.”

He seems unimpressed. His mouth twists into that crooked unhappy line, and he says, “and you’re supposed to be more unnoticeable than I am?”

“Hell yeah,” you say immediately. “Subtlety is my middle name. It’s not just my middle name, it’s all my names. Hideyoshi Nagachika is just a nickname.”

He looks suitably appalled, and you think you got him. You breeze your way up to him and plop a kiss on to his cheek, and you’re nearly out the door when he says, “You know, you’re not fooling anyone, Hide.”

Your hand hovers above the doorknob. A denial springs to your lips; detailed, logical, a little cheesy. Almost good enough to convince both of you.

Instead, you say, “I love you.”

He exhales in a whoosh.   He sounds tired, a thousand years old, and your heart _aches._ “I love you too.”

*

Almost a week ago, Kaneki had been dying in a puddle of his own blood, smiling up at you like you were the only thing he’d ever needed to see. His smile was been so kind, so peaceful. Seeing it had wrecked you from inside out. He knows and you know that you’ve never been the same since.

But that’s fine, that’s actually completely normal. You knew what you were getting into when you told Kaneki you’d be by his side, and whatever shitstorms you’d been caught in haven’t made you step out of your moral grey area yet. You try your hardest not to think about what would’ve happened if Touka hadn’t driven a truck straight into the warehouse and busted you both out.  

It’s been this way forever, you and Kaneki living as a two-man unit of badassery, each passing day a _fuck you_ to every dipshit who ever went on TV to say ghouls and humans could never exist together. Nothing’s changed, not in the long run; you still only take jobs that let you take down criminals, and you still occasionally freelance for the CCG.

You go out and the whole city smells like gasoline.

Suddenly that you’re stuck in that burning building again, smoke scratching at your bloody lungs, Kaneki sobbing quietly somewhere above you. The sky shatters into pieces of red, and there’s that cold, distinct voice in your head, saying _useless._

 It takes a while for you to calm down, and it’s only when you see Touka’s face that you realize where your feet have lead you. It’s not that you don’t know that something in you is horribly broken; it’s just that, if Kaneki found out, he’d never let you leave the apartment. He’d prowl through the streets, ripping out the throats of everyone who ever scared you, looked at you wrong.

You collapse at a table and put your head in your hands. Kaneki would _kill_ for you. _Has,_ in multiple occasions, and not told you.

You can’t tell yourself that that doesn’t make you incredibly happy anymore.

*

The job goes well. Jobs have a habit of going well for you, because you, in turn, have a habit of believing that the worst could and would happen. You slink back home, elbows and knees scraped raw by the concrete of the building’s roof and dents made by the binoculars around your eyes.

In the kitchen, Kaneki is burning dinner. Your heart shudders dangerously when you see him, and you go up to him and wrap your arms around his waist.

He swears at you and you laugh. “Really don’t think there’s anything left to burn in that pasta, Kaneki.”

He sighs. “Do you want to order something in?”

You turn him around. His skin feels stretched on his sharp cheekbones, shadows claiming his face. Neither of you got much rest ever since he was turned into a ghoul, but you’re both alive, you’re together, and it always hits you viscerally in times like these. It’s more than you could have ever asked for.  

You kiss his eyelids, and watch his eyelashes flutter like moths. “How about we just call it a day?”

He melts into you, and you think fiercely; _I am **here,** and I am yours for as long as you’ll have me. _“Yeah, sure,” he breathes into your forehead. “That’d be nice.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> argh, this needs very heavy revision, it was written whilst sobbing at 3am. Root A wrecked me good. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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